Pultizer judging is exhausting work: from left, Peter Bhatia, editor of the Oregonian; Davan Maharaj editor of the LA Times; Raju Narisetti, managing editor of WSJ Digital Network, at Columbia Journalism School, Saturday, Feb. 23, 2013.
It's the weekend of the Oscars, but the biggest event in the journalism world is the annual judging of the Pulitzer Prizes. A jury of dozens of top editors from around the US is spending the weekend at Columbia Journalism School picking finalists for the Pulitzers (those finalists are then sent to the Pulitzer Board for the final selections and announcement in April).
The three SAJAers above are among the jurors this year. But there are several other senior editors running news operations in the U.S. As you may recall, the SAJA Editors Challenge 2012 featured several of them - as you can see from the photo montage below. Don't forget to participate in the SAJA Broadcast Challenge 2013 - help SAJA raise money for scholarships!
The titles of these folks as of 2011:
Fareed Zakaria (@fareedzakaria), editor-at-large, Time and host, “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on CNN
Jai Singh (@jaijs), editor-in-chief, Yahoo News, Sports, Entertainment
This is a screen grab from the NFL Network, minutes before kickoff for the 2013 Super Bowl XLVIII. Reporter Aditi Kikhabwala updating the audience from the sidelines.
If you are having Super Bowl withdrawal like many of us, here are some ways to reconnect with one of the most memorable championship games - in any sport - that we have seen. Not just because of the dramatic blackout, but also because of the quality of play.
Here are some South Asian connections for this year's big game, starting with a chance for you to listen in to our fifth annual SAJA-SAMMA Super Bowl webcast, presented with BlogTalkRadio (we've crossed more than 2 million listens over the last five years):
SAJA, the South Asian Journalists Association, and SAMMA, South Asians in Media, Marketing and Entertainment Association, present their fifth annual BlogTalkRadio conversation about the biggest day in American sports - from a South Asian perspective.
Join us as hosts Vijay Setlur (@VijaySetlur), Raakhee Mirchandani (@raakstar) & Sree Sreenivasan (@sree) chat with three ESPN anchors Adnan Virk (@adnanESPN) and Zubin Mehenti; Amar Shah (@amarshahism), digital features editor of NFL.com (see the Super Bowl trailer he wrote and produced: http://on.nfl.com/11qSbWA) as well as with filmmaker Evan Rosenfeld (@evansss), who is directing "Birth of a Sport," about the Elite Football League of India, which is the first professional American football league in South Asia, with teams in five cities in India, two in Sri Lanka and one in Pakistan.
My 9.5-year-old son helped me produce the webcast, keeping track of who got to speak how often. He also wrote down the names of two possible South Asian stars on the U.S. sports horizon. Satnam Singh Bhamara is a 14-year-old who is taller than Yao Ming was at the same age; and Roshan Lobo is the best player in the EFLI, the American pro football league trying to establish itself on the subcontinent (he's been invited to tryout with some undrafted players here).
Meanwhile, more South Asians connected to the NFL...
Other South Asian NFL notes: SAJAer Aditi Kinkhabwala - @akinkhabwala - who joined us as a guest from the Dallas Super Bowl when she was with WSJ, is now a reporter for the NFL Network; Manish Mehta is the NY Jets beat reporter for NY Daily News; Fellow NFL employees include Manish Jha, SVP, Digital, NFL; Vishal Shah, VP, Digital Media, NFL; On the team side: Paraag Marathe is chief operating officer of the San Francisco 49ers and has played a pivotal role in the business side of the operations. This season, Shripal Shah rejoined the Washington Redskins as senior VP and chief strategy officer. And, of course, the new owner - and most famous moustache - on the Jacksonville Jaguars is Shahid Khan (see the glowing "60 Minutes" profile: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50134050n
In addition to all this, it was great to see Virk anchor the 10 pm ET ESPN SportsCenter, doing NBA highlights while he waited for the game to finish; Mehenti anchoring the 11 pm ET ESPNews; and Kevin Negandhi anchoring the 9 am ET SportsCenter (he was to join us again on the webcast, but was under the weather during our webcast, so couldn't make it). For some reason, he chose the ESPN audience over the SAJA audience!
A friend posted this comment on Facebook "Great broadcast Sree, Vijay, Rakhee and all the sportscasters and NFL folk involved.....Fascinating to hear about Evan's film on and discuss American football league in India and the South Asians involved in football....etc....Thank you SAJA and SAMMA for hosting...."
Below are photos of Virk and Mehenti in action, including a shot of Virk giving NBA highlights while I watched the Super Bowl picture-in-picture, plus one of Mehenti at the start of his show.
That's Zubin Mehenti in the middle
Here is Kevin Negandhi, prescient tweeter!
Some Super Bowl and other sports coverage by SAJAforum over the years:
Time is the latest US magazine this year to profile Imran Khan in an in-depth fashion, joining the NYT Magazine and the New Yorker (see below for links).
The story, "The Long Shot" is the cover in three of the four global editions (a profile of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is on the US cover).
At SAJA, we've watched South Asian journalists become a bigger part of the media landscape than we could have imagined when we got started 18+ years ago. Not only are reporters and anchors much more commonplace, they are also covering some of the biggest stories of our time - in all sorts of fields.
This morning, around 9 am ET, Americans tuned into two of the biggest sports channels - ESPN and ESPN2 - for coverage of breaking news about the Penn State scandal report by former FBI chief Freeh. And there were two South Asians on set helping explain the report.
On ESPN, Kevin Negandhi (@KNegandhiESPN), co-anchor of the 9 am-noon edition of "SportsCenter" talked to football expert and Penn State alum Matt Millen. Over on ESPN2, Adnan Virk (@AdnanESPN) was guest-hosting "Mike & Mike" with Buster Olney and discussing the Free report, too.
Both Negandhi and Virk did a terrific job handling the live, breaking news in a calm, collected, helpful manner for viewers without letting their own reactions to the horrifying details of the report cloud their professionalism. Good work, gents.
You might recall that both have been fixtures (along with fellow SAJA ESPN anchors Zubin Mehenti and Anish Shroff - yes, four South Asian anchors ESPN) on the annual SAJA-SAMMA Super Bowl Sunday webcasts each February. You can listen to the 2012 version, featuring Negandhi, Virk and Mehenti at this link.
July 2007: That's a Preston Merchant photo of Bobby Ghosh, world journalist and snappy dresser (down to his red socks), posing in front of two of his many iconic Time covers.
Below is a memo from Rick Stengel, the top editor at Time magazine. He says three things about Bobby Ghosh (@GhoshWorld):
Ghosh to become editor-at-large, roving the country and globally writing stories.
Ghosh has a new book, "The New Middle East" coming out this spring.
Stengel calls him one of "Time's greatest assets" and cites several of the cover stories he wrote over the last year.
Congrats to Bobby, a great SAJA member and role model who always helps young journalists who seek him out for advice. He was one of our 11 editors in the SAJA Editors Challenge - check it out. And below the Stengel memo you'll find a video of Ghosh interviewing Pakistan's Imran Khan.
Over on his blog, Prem Panicker reminds us about one of Ghosh's most widely-read piece: "The piece he is best known for is this chilling sit-down with an Iraqi suicide bomber; here, he discusses with Bob Garfield of On the Media how that story came about, and what the experience was like [transcript here]."
[To reach Bobby Ghosh, e-mail saja(at)columbia.edu (subject line = pass onto Bobby Ghosh) or use the comments section below.] From: "Stengel, Richard - Time U.S. Date: March 8, 2012 10:07:34 AM EST To: +TI-TM-ALL_TIME_EDIT Subject:Staff Announcement
From: Rick Stengel
To: All TIME Edit Staff
I'm delighted to announce that Bobby Ghosh has been promoted to editor-at-large. Bobby is one of TIME's greatest assets and this past year was one of his best yet. He kept us on top of the Arab Spring with a series of cover stories, features, blog posts and tweets which helped our readers make sense of one of the world's most important stories. He's also done much-talked-about international covers on Turkey's Erdogan, Leo Messi, and The World After Gaddafi − all of which match up with his classics on life in Iraq. Bobby, of course, was our Baghdad bureau chief for five years, and this year as deputy international editor, he kickstarted the renewal of the international magazine. His summer journeys issue for international on the scholar Ibn Battuta is still being talked about. Bobby just completed the TIME book 'The New Middle East,' which is coming out this spring. Bobby will become a roving correspondent doing both international and domestic stories, and not only on foreign policy hot spots but his other loves, food and sports. Bobby's mixture of great and intrepid reporting, unique insight and powerful writing is a recipe for what makes TIME exceptional. Please join me in congratulating Bobby on his promotion and new assignment.
Rick
A 2011 video of Bobby Ghosh interviewing Imran Khan of Pakistan:
[To reach Bobby Ghosh, e-mail saja(at)columbia.edu (subject line = pass onto Bobby Ghosh) or use the comments section below.]
If you have visited Zuccotti Park recently, you may have seen a man in his thirties leading a meditation session of about 30 protesters.
A midst the chaos that is inherently part of Occupy Wall Street movement, that's Rasanath Das or Chelakara Ramanth (his given name), a former investment banker and an Ivy League graduate who now wakes up at 4:30 a.m. for daily prayer and occasionally goes to Zuccotti Park to lead meditation sessions.
According to a profile in the Wall Street Journal by Jo Piazza, Das, who spends most of his time looking for enlightenment, once used to earn a $170,000 salary negotiating deals at Bank of America.
It's Grammy Sunday in America, and here is a music-related post, including some items connected to the biggest music awards in the land and some not.
Two long-time friends of SAJA, Chandrika Tandon and Vijay Iyer, were nominated for Grammys today. They didn't win, but they certainly showed yet another dimension of the South Asian community in the U.S. You can listen to the SAJA webcast here.
Chandrika Tandon (@soulchantmusic), nominated for Best Contemporary World Music Album for "Soul Call"; and Vijay Iyer (@vijayiyer), nominated for the Best Jazz Instrumental Album for "Historicity".
Jay Sean, who hit #1 on the Billboard charts with "Down" two years ago - and whose webcast with SAJA/SAMMA you can listen to at this link - is back. Here's a press release:
Jay Sean and Lil Wayne Recreate Magic
On February 8, 2011, Jay Sean released his latest single “Hit the Lights” featuring Lil Wayne on iTunes. The club banging track rocketed to the top 20 on the first day and within 72 hours, “Hit the Lights” shot up the charts and held the #4 spot. Jay Sean and Lil Wayne have surely recreated the magic of their first single together, in fact, this time around the dynamic duo has outdone the initial success of “Down” by taking their track to the top five immediately following the release.
For interviews with Jay Sean please contact Komposit Entertainment: isha at kompositlive.com (tell her SAJA sent you).
From a note by SAMMA co-founder Raj Shah:
HP, in its new global campaign “Everybody On” with Alicia Keys includes a video from Billboard pop/urban recording artist Jay Sean, on the heels of Jay’s Tuesday release of a new track “Hit the Lights” (#3 on iTunes as of Friday).
It's the first time that HP, the largest computer-maker in the world has included a South Asian artist in its U.S. content/campaigns.
This is a preview on YouTube before it hits the HP Global site:
Nita Chawla, a NY-based singer-songwriter, has just written a song, "Revolution," dedicated to the people of Egypt & Tunisia. It's not yet on NitaChawla.com, but she's shared it with SAJAforum. Thanks, Nita!
Long-time SAJA member Brian Q. Silver, Ethnomusicologist and World Music Curator of the Voice of America wrote in to let us know that he has launched a new VOAWorldMusic page on Facebook. He's looking forward to your feedback: BSilver at voanews.com.
Liveblogging, sorta, the Grammys:
11:20 pm: This ad runs:
10:50 pm: Nicki Minaj, the Trinidadian hip-hop star (who is of South Asian origin) is presenting a category with will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas.
10:10 pm:Norah Jones, who won nine Grammys between 2000 and 2009, is presenting a category (she presented with Ringo Starr last year).
[Desi Spotting = items with a South Asian connection - see our archive]
Sunday, Feb. 6, 2011: Live-blogging the Super Bowl on this post, looking for South Asian stuff during the telecast - starting 6:30 pm EST. You can see all the commercials at http://foxsports.com/ads
What did we miss? Email us: saja at columbia.edu or @sajaHQ on Twitter.
We'll be looking for sideline shots of Brandon Chillar, who is a member of the Green Bay Packers. A terrific linebacker for the team, he was injured in November, so is not in uniform tonight.You can listen to the SAJA webcast from 2009 with Chillar; his agent, Jim Ivler, his agent; and Kevin Negandhi, ESPN anchor.
SAJA, the South Asian Journalists Association, and SAMMA, South Asians in Media, Marketing and Entertainment Association, present a conversation about the biggest day in American sports from a South Asian perspective. Join us as SAJA co-founder Sree Sreenivasan (@sree) and sports marketing prof Vijay Setlur (@vijaysetlur) chats with ESPN's Kevin Negandhi (@knegandhiespn), who's co-hosting SportsCenter that night; Anish Shroff (@anishESPN), ESPN anchor-reporter, who covers college footballl; Adnan Virk (@adnanvirkESPN), ESPN anchor; Aditi Kinkhabwala (@AKinkhabwala), NY Giants reporter for the Wall Street Journal, who is covering the Super Bowl; and Arash Markazi (@arashmarkazi) columnist for ESPNLosAngeles.com. We had hoped to have Chillar call in for a few minutes, but he wasn't able to join us (see above for our 2009 webcast with #54).
12:08 pm: SAJAer and ESPNEWS anchor Adnan Virk (@adnanvirkESPN) (or the right) co-hosts "Highlight Express," filled with Super Bowl coverage. Negandhi was a guest on SAJA's Super Bowl webcast - see link above - and discussed his career path, advice for those interested in sportscasting and more. Click on image for bigger version.
10:02 pm: A desi gets a Super Bowl ring - Brandon Chillar (who is on injured reserve) will be among those who get a Super Bowl Ring as the Packers beat the Steelers. That makes him the second South Asian to win a ring (Bobby Singh was the first, with the St. Louis Rams).
From an 2009 post on SAJAforum, here are the only two other South Asian players to play for the NFL:
Bobby Singh, St. Louis Rams (the only player, perhaps, to be on the teams to win an NFL Super Bowl, a Canadian Football League Grey Cup and an XFL championship)
Sanjay Rajiv Beach, who played four years from 1989-1993 (for the NY Jets, Green Bay Packers and San Francisco 49ers); he is in the record books for catching soon-to-be superstar Brett Favre's first proper completion, in 1992 (Favre's very first completion was a pass deflected to, and caught by, Favre himself).
9:58 pm: SAJAforum exclusive! This is a photo of SAJAer and ESPN anchor Kevin Negandhi (@knegandhiESPN), taken minutes before he hosts SportsCenter, which goes live on ESPN as soon as the Super Bowl ends on Fox.. The SportsCenter right after the Super Bowl as got to be one of the highest-rated episodes of the most popular sports shows in the world. Negandhi was a guest on SAJA's Super Bowl webcast - see link above - and discussed his career path, advice for those interested in sportscasting and more. Click on image for bigger version.
UPDATE - 10:08 pm: A photo of Negandhi in action:
8:20 pm: SAJAer Aman Batheja (@amanbatheja), a reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is tweeting from the action. Here are some of his tweets:
amanbatheja8:12pm via twidroyd jerry jones was right. this is the greenest #superbowl ever #sbst #sbxlv http://twitpic.com/3x9j2l
And you can see one of his blog posts here, which is about fans outside the stadium (which is where you see him below).
7:40 pm: From tweets to @sajaHQ by Niraj Warikoo (@nwarikoo), religion reporter for the Detroit Free Press:
The guy who helped former Steelers all-star center Mike Webster when he was sick was an Indian-American, Sunny Jani http://es.pn/hch7fM
"For the last six years of Mike Webster's life, from 1997 to 2002, Jani was his most consistent, most constant companion."
7:05 pm: There are three Groupon ads coming up during the Super Bowl telecast (featuring Cuba Gooding, Jr., Timothy Hutton, and Liz Hurley). The site with came to worldwide attention when it turned down Google's offer of a $6-billion acquistion, is now preparing for an IPO said to be valued at $15 billion. The desi connection? Groupon's VP of product development is Suneel Gupta (@guptathink), who we featured on SAJAforum two years ago when he launched KahaniMovement with his brother Dr. Sanjay Gupta (@SanjayGuptaCNN) of CNN. Suneel's wife is SAJAer Leena Rao (@leenarao), who is a writer at TechCrunch, the popular tech news site.
6:45 pm: While you're watching the most famous hair in American sports - that would be Troy Polamalu's lustrous tresses - take a moment to see a NY Post article called "The Hair Pair." It's about how SAJA Board member Raakhee Mirchandani (@raakstar) has the same hair as Polamalu.
MIT quantum astrophysicist Nergis Mavalvala was announced Sept. 28 as one of 23 winners of the coveted 2010 MacArthur Fellowship, also known as a genius grant, and will receive a $500,000 “no strings attached” award over the next five years.
“I had always known of the MacArthur fellowship and all the wonderful scientists, historians and artists who had won it in the past, but I never, ever in my wildest dreams thought that I would be one of them,” Mavalvala, the first-known Parsi to receive the award, told India-West.
“I am incredibly humbled and so grateful to my colleagues and everyone who has supported my work,” she said from her office at MIT on the afternoon the winners were announced.
Back in 1996, we put together a list of past South Asian winners (or, in the case of Jhabvala, South Asian connections). Anyone missing? The award was first given out in 1981.
A lot has happened since then, especially in the last few months: The much publicized sale of Newsweek by the Washington Post Company to electronics magnate Sidney Harman (for a $1 pricetag and the assumption of $47 million of liabilities). Rumors of a hookup with The Daily Beast. The launch of a Pakistan edition of Newsweek. Several big names have left the magazine, including SAJAer Fareed Zakaria, who is now an editor-at-large at Time, connecting his CNN show, "Fareed Zakaria GPS" with the network's Time Inc cousin.
In America’s relationship with Pakistan, carrots predominate, in part because we have so few sticks. After our almost unquestioned support for Pakistani dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf didn’t elicit sufficient cooperation against the Taliban, we showered the civilian government that replaced him with $7.5 billion in aid, to little effect. American generals praise the very real sacrifices—in blood and treasure—made by the Pakistani Army in the fight against militants in Swat and South Waziristan; yet calls to broaden the campaign to North Waziristan, home to one of the deadliest Afghan insurgent groups, the Haqqani network, go unheeded. U.S. and Pakistani diplomats recite platitudes about “our common enemy, and Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari repeatedly invokes his assassinated wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, to underscore his dedication to battling extremists. But that depends on whose extremists.
We asked the always upbeat Hajari three quick questions about Newsweek, the future of US-Pak ties and the new Pakistan edition. His answers, via e-mail:
Recent Comments